Coffee Shop
by Lauren the Oxymoron
Summary: Will and Elizabeth stumble across each other unexpectedly after not speaking since the last day of secondary school. Modern day WE


Disclaimer- I don't own them. I am just the Stromboli. Minus the whole evil thing.

A/N- I added a disclaimer and an A/N, but then didn't save the changes, and the continued on to post the rough copy of this story. I am special. Anyway, the original A/N went something like this: I should be writing The Sun and the Moon, but this idea wouldn't leave me alone. So, I just had to write it. Hopefully I can now write on my WIP in peace. Anyway, I wrote this story pretty fast, I was basically just getting everything down. So it is quite rough and probably riddled with typos. It also sounds rather rushed. But I just spent about four hours writing it. So up it goes. It's also pretty vague. Like, what is Will brooding about in the beginning? I did have an original plan for that, and I allude to it, but it's pretty unobvious. So, you can make up whatever you want about that, if it so pleases you.

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Coffee Shop 

Will sucked in a deep breath of the wind rolling off of the Thames. The familiar, barely detectable scent of fish and algae laced through the icy gusts of air that Will turned his collar up against. Hands shoved in his pockets, he carefully twisted his way through the crowds of people that all seemed to be going the opposite direction from him.

This was good, he needed this. He was in a crowd of people, lost in a sea of bodies, adrift in this ocean of people going their own way, too absorbed in themselves to notice him. There was nothing more isolating and anonymous than being in a crowd. He looked at the people brushing past him, a dark and fasionable girl chatting on her mobile phone, a couple pushing a pram, a stooped old man with less time but more urgency than everyone else to get where he had to be. As Will watched them, it was easier to forget himself, to let his thoughts and problems get caught in the blowing wind and go tumbling down the street. He wondered where they all were going, what all of their stories were, what trouble it was that clouded the old man's eyes. Thinking of the group as a whole, Will's own problems seemed insignificant.

He continued down the street, getting buffeted by the masses of people too focused on their own destination to worry about his own. Being in a mob can be humbling, and he definitely had been needing to get some perspective lately. As a man who seemed to take up the entire sidewalk bumped into Will, making him reel at the man's bulk, he was reminded that although _his_ world was crashing towards oblivion, the rest of the world continued living and that everyone had their own lives and weren't just someone stitched into the tapestry of the life of William Turner.

Giving himself a chagrined smile, he again told himself what had been his mantra for last week, "It's hardly the end of your life." But repeating it in his head this time had the opposite of desired effect, he felt a weight crushing his chest, as poetic as it sounded, it was true -- he felt as if his heart was being squeezed in a vice like grip. His breath was actually becoming ragged and inhaling made a searing pain shoot to his head.

Dammit, the crowd around him was starting to blur around the edges, he was no longer a part of it, but detatched and lost in himself rather than in it. The wind that had blown his troubles away had died down, and his ghosts had come back to haunt him.

He rubbed his head in frustration, as if he could wipe his thoughts away from his brain like he could sweat from his forehead. That was his problem. He thought and thought and thought so that he could never really get away from himself. He was trapped in his brain.

His head was beginning to ache. Tea. He needed to get some tea into his system, maybe it could drown his thoughts. Looking across the street, he was glad to see a small cafe. Although they would probably charge at least three times the worth for it, seeing as he was in the trendy part of Chelsea, Will was grateful.

He entered the small shop and was assaulted by the smells of nutmeg and cinnamon. The place was cramped and choatic, but Will was enchanted by it. Small tables were packed into half of the room, all of them occupied by laughing friends or flirting couples blowing and sipping on their cups of tea. Books were thrown in the shelves that lined the whole perimeter of the room. Will looked at the titles and saw everything from Catch 22 to Harry Potter to Dr. Seuss. There was a line at the counter to order drinks, which two people were working behind, but how they could both fit and make the drinks mystified Will. He watched them as they twisted around one another, filling the cups with tea, mixing in some spices, topping some with cream, taking some to the machines Will wouldn't have thought made something as simple as tea. They seemed to dance with one another, weaving in and out according to the other's steps, as they made one specialty tea after another. The place was warm and trendy and inviting, and Will was quite glad he had stumbled upon it. The heady aroma had already started to abate his headache and ease his breathing.

He ordered a simple chamomile tea and sat at a table that had been luckily vacated. He pulled out the sketch pad that he always carried with him and began to draw while he sipped on his tea. Might as well do something constructive, he reasoned. His diversion of design, coupled with the quaint cafe and the better than usual tea, worked wonderfully, and soon he fell completely into his work, his worries and problems from before fading back into the recesses of his mind.

"I want a cafe au lait, in a cup, not a bowl, with one third expresso coffee, and two thirds steamed milk and with vanilla, and foamed milk on top, but not the usual one centimeter of it."

Her voice cut through Will's concentration, and he looked up at the difficult customer. The two workers were at their dance again, as she waited near the register, holding onto some notes she had out to pay for her coffee. He looked at her profile -- a high forehead, a gently sloping nose leading to her two full lips, parted as she watched as the male worker preparing her so very particular coffee. Her jaw was sharp and strong. And so so familiar. He knew her. He knew he knew her. How did he know her? He looked at the rest of her, curly hair cascading over her shoulders, her slender arms, her thin waist, her long long legs -- he remembered them. But from where? It was on the tip of his tongue, burning in the pit of his stomach, vibrating in his heart -- she had meant something to him. He felt his lips form a name, he tasted it in his mouth and knew that it was right, that it was her.

_Elizabeth._

The coffee making dance was over, and the boy handed Elizabeth her cafe du lait in a cup, not a bowl, with one third expresso coffee, and two thirds steamed milk and vanilla, with the foamed milk less than a centimeter inch. She paid for it, and turned to leave the shop. Will felt his throat close. No, she had to stay! He hadn't seen her in so long, it was almost cruel of the world to let him see her for only a fleeting moment.

As she turned towards the door, she glanced at Will, who suddenly realized just how intently he had been staring at her. As she walked towards the door, Will could practically hear the cogs in her mind working to the conclusion he had just arrived at. She stopped midstep, and comically turned back to see him again. Her eyes were wide, still green and flecked with gold as Will remember them. Will saw them darken a shade so that they were more olive than their usual clear emerald.

"William Turner?" she said, her hand flying to her throat, as if trying to figure out if it had really been her who had spoken.

"Elizabeth," Will returned with a relieved smile. It _was_ her and she _did_ remember him. He watched as her eyes lightened again and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. She was older, more mature looking than the image that Will forever carried of her in his mind, but she was still beautiful. She walked over to the table, in the shadowy corners of the room. She gestured to the empty chair and raised her eyebrows.

"Sit," Will said with a nod and a smile, this was so surreal. And yet he knew it was happening, because not even he could have dreamed something so perfect, yet so unlikely.

"What are you doing in Chelsea?" Elizabeth finally asked, lifting her drink to her perfectly red, full lips. Will was trying to imprint the image of her face in his memory, every little detail of her -- the way one of her curls pooled in the hollow of her neck, and the graceful way her hand swept across her face to tuck her hair behind her ear studded with a small diamond earring.

"I live in here. Well, not here in Chelsea. Near here. Actually, not that close to here," Will said with an embarrassed smile as he tripped over his words. "I just came here for the day. A holiday from myself," Will admitted, and dropped his eyes as he revealed more than he intended to.

Elizabeth nodded, "I've always been drawn here too. I think it's the gypsy in me," she said with a self conscious giggle. "This is the borough of artists, after all. And it used to be at the center of the bohemian revolution, right? I can relate to them..." Elizabeth trailed off and Will suspected that she too had revealed more than she wanted.

They both sipped their drinks as the silence settled around them.

"So what are you up to these days?" Elizabeth asked as she set her coffee down, choosing a safe topic of conversation.

"Well, in basic terms, I'm a welder. The architect hands me the designs and I make the frame and metal bits."

"Oh," Elizabeth said, not entirely sure what to say to that. Will, who usually took pride in his trade, was slightly ashamed of his menial job. He could almost see her mind reluctantly admitting that everyone had been right about him. He didn't want to think so callously of Elizabeth, but there was a prejudice in his line of work, he couldn't change that, and neither could she.

"What's that, then?" she asked, pointing to what he had been working on before she had interrupted him.

"Oh, well... I sort of, sometimes, well... I do some designs too. But not like the designs that I weld for. They are sort of just objects d'arte, sculptures and the like..." Will said humbly, again sort of embarrassed. Elizabeth leaned over and picked up his pad and started looking at some of his drawings.

"Will! You are more of the bohemian artist than I could ever dream to be! I'm embarrassed that I even refered to myself as such in the presence of a true artist," she said, her eyes shining, her whole face glowing as she looked up at him with admiration.

"I'm no artist, Liz," he said as he blushed. "I'm just a welder," he said softly, his concerns from before catching up with him again. Resolutely, he shoved them to the back of his brain. He couldn't get tangled up in his thoughts, not right now. Now was for him and Elizabeth. "So what are you doing with yourself?"

Elizabeth handed his designs back to him before taking a deep sigh. "Well, I'm sort of career shopping right now. I just want it to do something with children. I think I like to mother, because I never had that in my own life," she admitted, and then quickly dropped her eyes from Will's.

"You would be wonderful with children, Elizabeth," Will said with a warm smile for her. She looked up at him again, giving him a small smile in return.

"How is your dear father?" he asked her, not doing a very good job at keeping the sarcasm from seeping into his voice.

"Still president of our alma mater. He should be retiring soon. Or dying, whichever comes first," she said, with a smile that told Will there was real concern beneath her joke.

"Well, I wish him well," Will said, not quite managing to sound sincere. Elizabeth gave a small understanding smile to him, before quickly glancing at her wristwatch. Was he keeping her? Was there something she needed to do? Somewhere to be? Someone to see? He felt his throat close up again at the thought.

"Are you still good friends with that Jack Sparrow, then?" Elizabeth asked him, laughing at some memory of him. Indeed, Jack Sparrow was not a character one could forget easily. Thankfully Elizabeth was laughing as she thought of him, and not shuddering, as many others would do.

"Jack and me? No, we weren't friends. We definitely weren't good friends," Will said. Needless to say, he fell in the last category.

"Oh, really? I thought you two were best mates!" Elizabeth said in disbelief.

"No, I was just an end to a means for Jack," Will said, although his voice didn't hold nearly half of the malice as it had for old Weatherby Swann.

"You could have fooled me. And I thought I knew you when we were in secondary school, William Turner! I would have sworn that you and Jack would have remained close after school," Elizabeth said, looking at him suspiciously.

"Oh, I must have misunderstood you, Liz! Jack and I _are_ still close. We are flatmates! But make no mistake, we aren't friends," Will teased. Elizabeth let out an arpeggio of laughter and Will felt as if the whole place had just brightened a bit.

"And you? You are still friends with all the kids of your father's friends?"

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose at him. "In much the same way as you and Jack, we weren't friends. You know that, Will."

He did know that. All of Elizabeth's so called friends had been imposed on her by her father. She obliged him, or at least it appeared so. She would go out with her "friends" on weekends, attend school functions with them, and be seen with them around the school, but when it had been firmly established that Elizabeth Swann was out with the selected kids, she would desert them for who she considered to be her true mates. In his last two years of secondary school, he had been included in that group. He and Liz would spend hours together at school talking about life, their opinions of teachers and classmates, different scientific theories that fascinated Elizabeth, and that Will was always knowledgeable about (although she never realized that he was knowledgeable about them just so he had something he could talk to her about), and together they would forget the society they lived in that said that they couldn't be friends. Will had loved spending time with her, he loved her defiance to her narrow minded father, he loved her curiousity, her sense of adventure, her ability to set aside the prejudice that separated them. He loved her.

In the last month of school, it had all gone wrong. Will had been planning on telling her at their graduation that he loved her and that he would follow her as she went to study at university and they could be together, away from her father. However, one night Elizabeth had been careless and they had been seen out together. Her father had exploded at her, and forbade her to talk to him outside of classes. She had only given Will a note explaining what had happened and an apology that she thought her father was probably right that they shouldn't see each other any more. It was so unlike her and her usual disobedience, that Will hadn't believed it at first. But whenever he saw her, she pretended not to see him. It had hurt Will deeply, and he lost his first love in the most cruel and sobering way.

"I do know that, Elizabeth," Will said, smiling at her warmly.

"Will, I always felt terrible after... well, after my father found out and I gave you that terribly inadequate note."

"Liz, don't even bother about it. It's only a scar now," Will said, with a brave smile. The truth was that it wasn't a scar, but an open, festering wound, and Will didn't think that he could bear to have the scabs peeled back again, or he would bleed to death.

"No, I have to explain, Will. Because it's not a scar for me. So even though it's terribly selfish, I have to tell you for myself," Elizabeth said in a strangely strangled voice. Will looked at her in confusion. It wasn't a scar for her either? But did that mean that it pained her when she thought of it too, that sometimes, late at night, she too could feel that deep plunging sadness that can eat up your entire body, mind and soul? But did that mean, that she had felt it too when they were in secondary school? That terribly but beautifully awkward feeling of being in love, even though you weren't exactly sure what love was, but you still knew that you wanted to find out?

"When he found out, Will, and he forbade me to see you, I felt terrible. I didn't know if I could go through the last month without talking to you. My carefully selected, father approved friends were wearing on me, and I didn't know if I could survive without someone who had more thoughts than what to wear to school to talk to. But the more I thought about, the more I saw how right he was. I know this sounds terrible, Will, but I was so very young and unsure of what was going on around me, and even more unsure of what was going inside of me. You see, Will, I think when we younger, I think over time... when I talked to you it was different... I felt more... I liked me when I was with you... and I think that I might have mistaken that as love. And don't get me wrong, Will, it could have developed into so much more if it could have been explored, but that was just the thing. School was ending in a month, and I would be going to uni, and you weren't. How could it be explored in those circumstances? So, that night, I thought about it and I thought that it was the easiest way to do it, to make Dad the bad guy, even though he really wasn't. So I wrote you that shoddy note, and in the last month I refused to look at you, because if I did, I thought I might cry right there in class. Really, Will, it was that strong. I don't think I've ever really gotten over it Will. Maybe because it wasn't resolved in the right way. Maybe it's because I let my dad be the villain. Maybe it's because there was so much potential, you know? We never even got to have a go at it, and that thought sort of haunted me the most. What could have been? Maybe you won't believe this, but it's the truth."

Will looked at her, he had to commit all of this to memory. His fingers were itching to draw her face, her eyes shining with the tears she had to hold back so long ago, her lips pouting and trembling, Elizabeth, delicate and vulnerable. He could almost hear the rip of the scabs reopening inside of him as he looked at her. Already he was forgetting the exact wording of her speech, and it suddenly seemed so important to him. He had to remember it exactly, he wanted to write it all down before he lost it all.

Elizabeth looked at him hopefully, waiting for a reply. He had so much he wanted to tell her, he wanted to tell her that he had felt the same way for her, but at the same time he wanted to protect her. Would it be easier if she thought that he hadn't felt the same way, so at least he hadn't been injured by the note and what had happened? Or would that make the love she had bottled up inside of her hurt even more? He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was right now, that he still loved her. He wanted to tell her that she had been young, and so had he. But there was now. They had now. He wanted to tell her that he still read all about black holes and Stephan Hawking, that that part of her could never die for him. He wanted to kiss her. More than anything, he wanted to kiss her.

Before he had time to think better of it, he leaned over the table and crushed her lips against his. He brought a hand to her face, his thumb brushing over her smooth skin, his fingers tangling in her curls. Elizabeth brought her own hand to his face, her fingertips trailing over his face tentatively. The kiss ended as quickly as it had started, and Will returned to his side of the table.

They smiled at each other, finally honest with one another for the first time in their lives together.

They had today.


End file.
